View from Aquarius tower.
How can we make these possible? Only through human will and action can we accomplish these goals. So the first important step is the one getting under way -- The Foundation.
What is the First Millennial Foundation? It is an organization of people like you and me who want to see the process that began on earth billions of years ago succeed. We want to see that the future of humanity is bright, healthy, and long-lived. To see that civilization isn't snuffed out by pollution, wars, environmental degradation, or natural catastrophe. We, as individuals and as a species, are capable of choosing our future. We can take the present realities and imagine many likely outcomes. By acting correctly we can bring about the most desirable of these futures. We of the Foundation believe that our tenuous existence as a thin layer of life on the surface of our tiny planet is endangered, but that there is hope for a long and promising future for our descendants as stewards for all the life forms on earth.
The First Millennial Foundation is unlike any other organization before it. Not only will we be providing humankind with the technological tools to develop and grow beyond the confines of our tiny home planet, we will also break the barriers of old social patterns that would slow our progress into the future. All the social systems we have today were developed to solve problems here, on earth. Social development in the past has always lagged behind the developing technologies. The FMF will explore new possibilities of social development. Our many colonies will provide room to test new and diverse theories in self-government. Even now as the Foundation is just beginning, we are discussing and experimenting with new methods of organization.
The Foundation is a network of free individuals. Our membership is not determined by country, race, religion, or any of the things that have divided people in the past. We are a network of individuals whose only common goal is to see to it that life survives beyond the bounds holding it to this small planet. We are a growing network of individuals connected by the various means of communications available today.
The power of freedom is not given for the few, but should be and can be available for all. Every member has a vote on every issue of interest to him or her. Decision-making authority is not restricted to the privileged few who may act mainly in self-interest or to groups who want to skew power in their favor. It is given to the people whom it will affect.
The laws will be built from the debate of the population. Natural leaders will come forward to support causes of their own interest. People will follow those who take a clear and level-headed stand on the issue and ignore those who are obviously wrong. Out of the chaos will arise a new balance of power. Out of our diversity will arise a common ground, not the divided 'war of words' that the party system encourages. But along with that common ground will be a tremendous potential for diversity.
Out Foundation membership is growing by leaps and bounds. By the year 2000 we expect to have more than 75,000 members. With all of us working together in unified action we will create a force strong enough to change the direction of history.
We will make use of various communications media. We will grow by reaching people through the internet, at conferences, through mailings, and via family members and friends. Already we have the website from which you are reading now. We also have newsletters, one from the home office in Rifle, Colorado and others produced by regional chapters. We have a video presentation in the design stages; it will be the first of many. We will also have our own magazine the 'New Millennium' that will rival Discover, Omni, and other new-age science magazines.
We will accomplish our mission of spreading life through the galaxy by setting forth our goals and organizing the people needed to accomplish them. As we move forward, we will review our progress to make certain that we are on the surest path to success. There are many possibilities in the future, many failures -- some successes. By consciously and actively working toward our long-term goals, we will succeed.
We will take the lessons of the past with us as we journey forward into the new realms of open space. We will take only that which is necessary for success and learn to live in harmony with every new environment we encounter. Living lightly and symbiotically are necessary in the oceans and especially in the hostile environments of space. Learning these and other lessons will take some time; that's why there are steps we must undertake to reach our goals.
The first step is called Aquarius Rising. This will be a model colony built in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It will be a test bed for the new technologies we need for building Aquarius and the steps that will follow. It will also include hotel and resort facilities so that many people will be able to come and see what we are doing, and this will bring in revenue and people needed to build the Foundation and Aquarius.
From the labs at Aquarius Rising we will develop and test an OTEC, mariculture, computer systems, and much more in order to prepare for the next steps, first an island built inside a protective lagoon and later islands afloat in the sea.
Aquarius Rising is the prelude to New Eden, our first open-ocean experimental island. New Eden will help us develop the construction techniques needed to build the sea-ment base and buildings for Aquarius.
Here we end our descriptive journey for now, but it is only the beginning. Again and again through the coming centuries we will return here to reflect on the journey ahead and on our progress. And every time we return in our thinking, it is an iteration in a long evolutionary process by which we build on the good of the past and discard ideas that have failed. As Marshall Savage wrote in "The Millennial Project": "Aquarius cannot spring spontaneously into being with the wave of a magic wand. Creating the Foundation is prerequisite to building Aquarius. But the catalyst needed to coalesce the Foundation is a vision, and a plan for realizing that vision." As with Marshall's book and with the Foundation, this reiteration and exploration are the purposes of this web site.